Community Leader Is Guilty

Enters Special Plea For Helping Criminals Out Of Community Service

August 03, 2006|By MATT BURGARD; Courant Staff Writer

A once-prominent community leader in Hartford has pleaded guilty in an agreement that could send her to jail for two months for taking bribes in exchange for helping criminals avoid court-ordered community service requirements.

Under the plea deal, Mamie Bell, 51, pleaded guilty to bribery under the Alford doctrine, which means she does not admit to committing the crime but acknowledges the state probably has enough evidence to convict her if she took the case to trial.

The agreement calls for Bell to serve 60 days in prison, but she also has the right to argue for a lesser term, or an alternative to incarceration, at her sentencing Sept. 22 at Superior Court in Middletown, according to her attorney, Wesley Spears.

Bell, who has a long history of political and community activism in Hartford, is the third of four suspects to accept a plea in the case, which began when law enforcement officials were tipped off last year that Bell and the other suspects were involved in a scheme to help criminals get out of serving court-imposed community service requirements.

The suspects all worked for contractors responsible for overseeing community service programs for the state court system. Bell and two of the other suspects, Kevin Shannon and Melvin Gray, worked for Community Partners in Action, one of Hartford's oldest and most respected community outreach agencies.

A fourth suspect, Shase Ricks, worked for the South Arsenal Neighborhood Development Corp., another community outreach group that helped oversee criminal offenders ordered to perform community service as part of their sentences.

An investigation by the Chief State's Attorney's Office found that Bell and Ricks forged several documents informing court officials that offenders had completed their community service requirements when, in fact, they had not, according to arrest records in the case. In some cases, Bell accepted payments of $100 or more from offenders trying to get out of their service requirements, the records say.

Bell and the other three suspects were arrested in February after they allegedly sold forged documents to informants working with undercover investigators, the records say.

Both Gray and Shannon, who were accused of accepting bribes in exchange for providing false documents, have pleaded guilty to bribery charges and are awaiting sentencing next week. Ricks' case is pending.

Bell is a former judicial deputy sheriff who was widely known in the city's legal and political circles. She was influential in helping to replace the former Stowe Village housing project in the city's North End with individual homes that helped transform the neighborhood. She also has long ties to the Democratic Party in the North End.